How do you increase horsepower and break speed records? For a motorcycle engine and aftermarket parts manufacturer, the answer is to allow engines to take in more air through cutting-edge five-axis CAD/CAM tools:

New Hampshire-based R & R Cycle can’t afford to slow down. The company operates in a highly competitive market, producing aftermarket products for Harley Davidson-style V-Twin engines and for its own engines, which are featured in custom motorcycles. Its constant challenge: producing high-quality, performance-enhancing components for the street and the drag strip.

To build competitive components and engines and to maximize horsepower, the company utilizes advanced flow testing for heads and dynamometers for their engines. Additionally, it relies on Mastercam CAD/CAM software from Connecticut-based CNC Software, Inc. and five-axis machining to optimize the air intake of its engines.

Founded in 1994 by Reggie Ronzello Jr., R & R started out as a motorcycle repair shop. Now, it makes cylinders, heads, rocker boxes, cam covers, engine bottom ends (cases), shafts, oil pumps, push-rod tubes and entire V-twin engines based on the Harley Davidson design. Its most important work involves modifying cylinder heads and ports to let them “breathe” more deeply for greater horsepower–a job it’s entrusted to CAD/CAM software and a Fadal five-axis machining center. Previous techniques were just not as effective. “To modify our engines we would hand-port heads to get them closer to the perfect state for proper airflow,” Reggie Ronzello Sr., R&D/programming manager, tells Modern Applications News. This method was not consistent, often producing irregularly shaped ports.

Enter Mastercam CAD/CAM software, which the company used to write effective programs for porting. “Once we had the Mastercam programs complete, then we could go in and make every port identical on the machining center. Without Mastercam, it couldn’t be done efficiently,” Ronzello Sr. tells Modern Applications News. But creating the programs and properly setting up the five-axis machining center proved to be a lengthy process, involving several iterations, hardware adjustments and finetuning of the interface between software and hardware.

According to Ronzello, they used Mastercam to generate a surface from a scan of a hand-ported head. They then turned to Brian Semprabond, who was recommended by the company’s Mastercam distributor, for help with the post processor. Semprabond developed the 5-axis post processor for the company. With the software and the machining center functioning properly, the shop was able to make much smoother, much improved ports. With such state-of-the-art systems, the shop could direct the tool’s angle of approach through the entire port. This enabled R & R to accommodate the special surface texturing required by different parts of the port. Through five-axis CAD/CAM, the company could count on ports with much smoother, more blended surfaces. Says the senior Ronzello, “This is important, because the more air you can get in the engine at the right velocity, means you can burn more fuel…and make more power, which is the best way to stay ahead of your competition.”

Source:

Breathing Easy With Five-Axis CAD/CAM
Modern Applications News, February 2005
www.manufacturingcenter.com/man/articles/0205/0205breathing_easy.asp